Transform referral-traffic into organic with Organic Search Sources

Question

Few years ago Yandex (Search System) following Google removed any search-phrase information from referer (only origin is known – https://yandex.…/), and now Yandex-traffic mostly becomes "referral" in GA.

To solve this problem i've added a new organic search source in property tracking settings (we using analytics.js-script of Universal Analytics):

• Search Engine Name: yandex
• Domain Name Contains: yandex.ru
• Query Parameter and Path Contains left blank.

So, a properly added custom organic source must have a higher priority than referral (as described on Processing flow chart) and matched traffic must becomes "organic".

But it didn't work, and Yandex search traffic still marked as "yandex.ru / referral" instead of "yandex.ru / organic".

I've tryed different combinations of the "Domain Name Contains" pattern:

• ^yandex\. (regexp style)
• yandex.
• yandex.ru with no effect.

By default there are built-in Yandex source, but it catch only traffic with referrer and "text"-parameter – only organic traffic. But Yandex doesn't send path and parameters in the referer anymore, as i told above.

And two built-in hosts – http://www.yandex.com/ and http://yandex.ru – is not enough: Yandex has a many TLDs: yandex.ru, yandex.ua, yandex.kz and many more – one for every country where it works.

So, built-in organic sources for Yandex are obsolete. What's why i'am trying to use a custom organic search.

Questions are:

1. Why no one of the variants (yandex. and yandex.ru) is not worked for Yandex's traffic and i'am still see same "yandex.ru / referral" share?
2. Can regular expression patterns (^yandex\., for https://yandex.ru) be used in the "Domain Name Contains" field of the organic search source?
3. Which value for "Domain Name Contains" field should i use for catching https://yandex.ru/ referer (without any path and parameters in referer URL) as an organic search source?

Answer 1

To do this, it is advisable to create 2 custom filters:

• Advanced
• Search and replace

The Advanced filter will be used to transform the medium from referral to organic.

Requires to enter the following Campaign Source as Field A:

^yandex\.(ru|ua|by|kz|uz|com|fr|com\.tr)$

In Field B (to be set as mandatory) select the Campaign medium, which must contain the term referral and in the Output field, the campaign medium, this time however must contain the term organic.

The Search and Replace filter will then have the function of transforming all the various domains (yandex.ru, yandex.by, yandex.kz, yandex.ua, etc...) into the generic yandex. It prompts you to select the Campaign Source as the filter field, then the following string as the field to search for:

^yandex\.(ru|ua|by|kz|uz|com|fr|com\.tr)$

And the term yandex as a string to replace.

This will make it possible to obtain all the traffic in question as yandex / organic on the platform. Consequently, the acquired data will end up in the desired channel and the session metrics will allow performing analyzes, as they will be aggregated.

https://www.analyticstraps.com/yandex-e-visto-come-referral-anziche-organico/